Any Christians doing children's work interested in a sharing support/ideas thread?

[Lovelydiscusfish]

Just that really. Dh and I about to start running Messy Church in our parish, with a couple of other families. We have a lot of faith, and wonderful guidance from our vicar, but it feels a bit daunting nonetheless. I am also doing the talks for our lay-led family service once a month, which again, is wonderful, but can be daunting at times. Just wondering if anyone else is doing similar work and wanted to share anxieties/ideas/moans/prayers etc.

New posts - happy Easter all! Obligatory (and anyone else around!), so sorry I missed your post. Am guessing I'm too late to pray for the success of your activity days, but will pray retrospectively for the impact of the work done at them! Hope all went smoothly, and that everyone (those organising included!) had a wonderful time. Did all go as planned/expected?
We had a fab service for Palm Sunday, with Shetland pony (?!), a bit of charging up and down the aisle (not on the Shetland),crafts afterwards, cake... It was lovely. I was actually away over Easter, so not planning to be involved in my local service anyway, which was just as well, as dd caught chicken pox, so we ended up not attending church at all on Easter Sunday - felt rather strange.
This Sunday we've got our (slightly belated) Easter-themed Messy Church - I'm doing edible Easter gardens, which I'm very exited about!

Hi all

Have been avidly reading through the thread.

Looking for suggestions to stimulate ideas for the kids when discussing children's church taking over the running of a service. All I know so far is that the kids want the service to be more active and lots of audience participation - now how do I translate this, especially as it's the first time we've tried this.

Yes, thank you, LDF, everything went great - we had to reorganise the timings when we discovered activities we'd planned to take half an hour were only taking fifteen minutes, but they worked out fine in the end. The second day was more relaxed as we had a better idea of what we were doing. Two of the girls who were only signed up for the first day were heard to be complaining to their parents that they didn't get to come back the second day on the way out, so I think that means they enjoyed it!

Quite a few of the families don't come to Church, so we've invited them all for tomorrow - we've got a feedback slot in the service where we're going to show some pictures and a big canvas painting we did, and ask some of the kids about the holiday club.

Edible Easter gardens sound great - we made doughnut tombs at the holiday club - whipped cream coloured green, with half a ring doughnut stood up in the cream, and an oreo for the stone that rolled away.

Hi Becles ! Have you got a children's leader who could lead worship with the kids? We had some kids mic'd up on Sunday, and the response from the congregation was great. Most of our congregation are usually up for some action songs! Could you also act out a Bible story, and call up members of the congregation to play certain parts - we have a traditional Christmas Day nativity that always beings something along the lines of "In a town called Nazareth there was a girl called Mary. Except Mary's real name was [insert name of unsuspecting congregation member]" Mostly it involves some poor acting to narration, with occasional repeating lines parrot-fashion. Also - we had a memorable Family Fortunes one Christmas - something that could be adapted for whatever the theme is?

TheO sorry I didn't see your posts about Easter activities earlier, but glad they all went well. I've taught on play schemes/kids clubs at my last church and would love to do so again. We used published materials: Going Bananas springs to mind.

Hi all! So sorry I haven't posted for so long. Have been going through some difficulties within our church, which made it feel harder to post (stupid I know - not least because you would all have been a great source of support with it all). All is getting better now. You've all been in my prayers.
Was wondering if anyone has any special plans for children's work over the summer? I'm hoping to organise something, like Messy Church but maybe a whole day in the week, during summer hols. It feels like families in our village might be quite keen on this - but am aware the offering would have to be appealing. We don't have many families/kids at "regular church", more at Messy Church, but still not huge numbers. But it's certainly got me thinking.

Oh, ldf I'm sorry things have been difficult at your church recently - we went through a difficult patch a few years ago which resulted it quite a few people/families leaving the church, which was hard. I'm glad things are getting better now.

I think a week-day messy church in the summer sounds great. Would it be wrong to pray for bad weather so lots of people turn up?!

We're running a week-long holiday club (aaaaaaaaaagh!) for 4-11s at the start of the summer. Somehow, we're going to make this one free to make it more accessible. We're looking at a pirate theme with the idea of Jesus as the "greatest treasure" with serious planning starting week after-next.

A couple of families in our church are starting a messy church in September, which is exciting but also something I'm trying to stay out of as much as possible since I'm already involved in the worship team, Sunday kidswork, mid-week kidswork and the parent and toddler group, and I probably ought to remember that I'm doing a degree too!

Hello! Anyone still around?

We're nearly halfway through our piratey holiday club here! The first two days have been good - we were a little short of leaders on the first day, which made dealing with some of the more challenging behaviour a little different, but we had several more leaders yesterday, which meant we could have 1-to-1s for a few children who needed them.

We had a very successful craft yesterday that I'd been stressing about for weeks with exploding treasure chests - I mixed bicarb with water to form a paste, and froze it in ice cube trays with little beads and pennies hidden in it. The kids were in pairs/threes and were giving a washing up bowl, a squirty bottle full of vinegar, a pipette with which to access the bucket of hot water, and a spoon, and let loose to extract their 'treasure'. Most of them got stuck right into it, and only one child said "it's only beads" - the rest were really excited about their treasure, especially when the first penny was found ("I've found money! I've found money!")

Today we're off out, which means walking 60 kids to a field about fifteen minutes walk away, including crossing two main roads!!

Is anybody else doing any sort of holiday club this summer?

Well done, TheO for your treasure chest idea and for getting the thread back on track. I would love to be doing a holiday club, but 60 children is just a pipe dream in our small community. However, nearly 300 homes are about to be built on the edge of town and with God, all things are possible, so watch this space! Messy Church continues to be well attended, so that's good for now.